Matryoshka - Jamie Townsend (LRL textile series)

Jamie Townsend's long poem Matryoshka is a delicate layering of language and sound. It just got published in the Little Red Leaves textile chapbook series: pocketbook size books that are sewn, printed, and bound with fabric covers scavenged from old curtains, bedsheets and other textile remnants. The textile format provides an intriguing physical wrap for the almost microscopic sensations in the poem, with its sutures that weave throughout the negative space. You can take a peek at the book online: Matryoshka

"In sections that move between anaphora & restraint, Townsend's material poetics charge the I and O divisions that begin each poem -- comprising a book in which the single and multiple slip in and out of each other in the "flocks of/ pelican/ un/ solvable/ sight." The title Matryoshka denotes famous Russian nesting dolls, and yet the subtle physics and physicality of such poems which attend to "sub-dermal termites scattering" reveal that such momentary nesting is in fact a station in orbit." - Ash Smith

Jamie Townsend lives in East Kensington, Philadelphia where he is organizer of the c/c reading series, and a co-founder and editor of con/crescent, a chapbook publisher & magazine focused on discursive essay / creative non-fiction. He is the author of the chapbook STRAP/HALO (Portable Press @ YoYo Labs, 2011) and recent work has appeared in various print and online publications, including Wheelhouse, Volt, Elective Affinities, Jacket2, The Poetry Project Newsletter and TRY.

About Little Red Leaves
Little Red Leaves is a collectively edited annual online journal of poetry as well as an ebook/paperback series of original books and reprints. The textile series is a special project of LRL, offering limited-edition poetry chapbooks with fabric covers and machine-sewn bindings. The LRL journal is currently taking submissions through the end of May 2011 for issue #6: The Ephemera Issue. Each poem selected for this issue will be "ephemeralized" into paper and printed objects, then mailed out to subscribers. To get a sneek peak of the upcoming issue or subscribe, visit our blog.

Little Red Leaves e-editions
Please look for forthcoming books in our e-editions series from Sarah Mangold, Hugo Garcia Manríquez, and Pattie McCarthy as well as a book length collaborative review of Michael Cross's Haecceities. An exquisite back catalog of the e-editions is available at littleredleaves.com/ebooks.

Jamie Townsend: Matryoshka
textile chapbook
$8

related links: experimental format, poetry